On November 30, an official press release from HALO’s side said, “Yesterday the members of HALO met directly with their fans to diffuse the controversy in person.” According to their agency, the members discussed with their fans various issues that had circulated on social media, including reports that leader Ooon gave fans’ presents to his girlfriend as a couple item, and that member Dino once composed a poem with a fan’s name in it using an inappropriate word.

During the meeting, HALO expressed remorse towards their fans, apologizing and clarifying that many of the repeated rumors were misunderstandings.

A message a fan received from leader Ooon.

Dino uploaded a letter on the fancafe, writing, “I feel responsible that I wasn’t able to take care of my team as the oldest member. We tried to approach fans like a friendly neighborhood oppa, but I think we just created more misunderstandings. Please accept our sincere apologies.”

The agency added, “We take responsibility for failing to properly manage such a young rookie group, and we are truly sorry for disappointing the fans who had always supported them. Instead of keeping quiet, we thought it would be best to openly acknowledge what we did wrong and explain the misunderstandings. We felt it would be too harsh to prevent such young boys from promoting because of unfair stigmatization, so we decided to resolve the issues as quickly as possible.”

The agency also clarified that they have checked with Yoon Dong and Ooon and have verified that that the two did have girlfriends, but they are currently no longer in a relationship. Ooon explained, in regards to accusations of him giving fans’ gifts to his girlfriend, “I did give my girlfriend a cellphone case because it was the same size as my girlfriend’s cellphone, but it wasn’t because I thought less of fans’ gifts.” HALO also explained that they didn’t throw away fans gifts, but that they must have fallen in the trash while cleaning. “We couldn’t explain clearly before because we thought there might be misunderstandings and speculation, but it is not true that we threw away fans’ gifts,” said HALO.